


The Plagues

by orphan_account



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Biblical References, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 13:48:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7643017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The New Testament was mostly boring stuff about loving thy neighbor and water into wine (he hadn’t appreciated the wonder of that miracle until well into adulthood). The Old Testament, which was dripping in blood and guts and vengeance and S-E-X, was much better in 10-year-old Arcade Gannon’s estimation. He hadn’t really thought about it in years, but he had always loved the stories about Moses and his magic staff and rivers of blood. He hadn’t paid much attention to the rest of the story, at least not until it got to the good parts, with the death of the firstborn and parting of the Red Sea.</p><p>As an adult, he was starting to wish he’d paid attention to the part with the locusts."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Plagues

**Author's Note:**

> Browsing my Tumblr, and I stumbled across [this post](http://placentalmammal.tumblr.com/post/79342240094/doc-gannon-resource-scarcity-induced-by-drought) from a couple years back. Thanks, past me, for writing weird stories about locusts.

Arcade Gannon had never been much of a praying man. Daisy Whitman had seen to it that “Bible Studies” had been included in his mother’s piecemeal home school curriculum, and he owed a working knowledge of the Christian faith to their joint efforts. He hadn’t taken to religion like some did, hadn’t ever really _believed_ beyond a vague sense of unease whenever he stopped and thought about how long it’d been sense he’d set foot in a church.

He had always liked the stories more than the faith itself: The New Testament was mostly boring stuff about loving thy neighbor and water into wine (he hadn’t appreciated the wonder of that miracle until well into adulthood). The Old Testament, which was dripping in blood and guts and vengeance and S-E-X, was much better in 10-year-old Arcade Gannon’s estimation. He hadn’t really thought about it in years, but he had always loved the stories about Moses and his magic staff and rivers of blood. He hadn’t paid much attention to the rest of the story, at least not until it got to the good parts, with the death of the firstborn and parting of the Red Sea.

As an adult, he was starting to wish he’d paid attention to the part with the locusts. He, along with the rest of the Mojave, had assumed that grasshoppers had gone the way of the house cat--there was simply no reason to think otherwise. No one had seen a locust in god-only-knows how long. No one even knew what they were, really. Dramatic though it was, the phrase “a plague of locusts” conjured up images of rats and new diseases. It suggested nothing of dark clouds on the horizon, of thousands of wings beating in sync.

And nothing about what a hundred thousand mouths did to 3 dozen acres of farmland.

Shortages were a fact of life in Freeside. The Followers did what they could, but the fact of the matter was that the Mojave simply did not contain enough of anything to furnish all of its residents with food, water, and shelter. Trouble was always in abundance, but everything else was ‘scarcer than hen’s teeth,’ to borrow a phrase.

Months and years of privation didn’t prepare Arcade for what came the day after the locusts passed over. The bugs landed on the NCR sharecropper farms, the only patch of green for miles around, and devoured every plant right down to the soil. There was nothing left, nothing at all.

The Followers were prepared for droughts and for floods and for tornadoes and earthquakes. Most natural disasters would have left a few living things: the hardiest plants, the ones growing in the hardest-to-reach areas or on top of the highest hills. The Followers were well-versed in the art of making-do, of stretching their measly stores to last until the next shipment arrived in from the East.

But before it can be stretched and made to feed a crowd, food must exist. And with an entire harvest in the bellies of the locusts, there simply wasn’t anything. Not for the troopers in their bunks or the drunks in their gutters. It was the same everywhere: all the green in the had been cut down, reduced to brittle stalks and mean shoots in the dry earth. There was simply nothing left.

When the going got tough, the tough got going, and the Arcade Gannons of the world backed away slowly, hands raised in defeat. Arcade was the opposite of graceful under pressure. It was his tendency to panic and forget himself, coupled with his dry “wit” had landed him in the research tents long before the bugs came through and ate everything. Coward that he was, he was grateful to be in the back, hidden away, while Julie and the rest of the doctors turned away the people who’d come to count on them for support. The Followers were living off Radroach meat and powdered milk. All anyone talked about any more was food, food and water and the shipment due at the end of the month.

The locusts had descended on the 16th, and the Caravans were supposed to come through with food on the 31st. Two weeks, two weeks on top of months of scrimping and scraping and just getting by. Most everyone was already wearing their belts on the tightest notch, saving what could be spared for the people of Freeside. The unexpected shortage burned through their emergency supplies in two days.

Arcade couldn’t help but feel like he was getting the shortest end of the stick. He was the largest person on staff, and thus called upon whenever the crowds amassing outside the Fort’s gates got unruly. His height loaned him a presence that the doctors and guards lacked, and he hated using it against some poor bastard just trying to get by. He didn’t ask to be born freakishly large, he just _was_ (“Superior genetic specimen,” Moreno would’ve said).

So he was hungry and he was angry at himself and at Julie, and then he felt guilty whenever Beatrix Russel slipped him her rations (“I’ve survived for longer on less,” she’d say grimly, “you need to eat if you’re going to playing peacekeeper”). The Kings had up and disappeared as soon as the food ran out, and the NCR was no help. Half the locals were convinced that Hildern, over at the OSI had somehow called down the locusts to kill off all the Freesiders. It wasn’t even the stupidest rumor going around, but it was certainly in the top ten.

In the end, it didn’t really matter whether you attributed the locusts and the food shortage to mad science or an angry god. For two weeks, there was no food in the Mojave, excepting what little had been squirreled away by the paranoiacs before the plague hit. Seemed that everyone was waiting on the shipment at the end of the month.

And Arcade was almost certain that there was some sort of metaphor in that statement, but he’d be damned if he could pick out what it was. He never did learn to separate the lessons from the stories.


End file.
